movies are designed and intended to take us away to bring us someplace else in the 1930s. Even as people barely could find two nickels to rub together, they found a way to go to the movie theaters because they needed the escape from the misery that surrounded us. During the Great Depression movies are designed to help us get away for a couple of hours.
A familiar tune can catch your ear and take you into another world. Sitting in a darkened theater also takes us on a transformational journey with images that show up on the big screen taking us entirely new places in time and even an emotional state. You combine the two and you have music and movies together as a potent way to tell new stories. This is random acts of knowledge presented by Heartland Community College. I'm Steve fast your host. Today we're talking with an enthusiast of history and movies. And in particular, we'll dig into musical movies. We'll let today's guest introduce himself.
Hi, I'm John Luke gear. I've created a series of film history presentations under the banner movie music, romance. And some of the folks at Heartland might also remember a program called American history and Hollywood speed and other presentation that I've created. But they all basically fall under American history in one way or another. Essentially, we focus on the past 100 years,
you start your presentation, or at least one of them with the movie splash. Now for those that don't remember, that is a movie from the 80s where Tom Hanks meets a mermaid played by Daryl Hannah. And one would not think of this as a classic example of movie music. So why include this one in your presentation?
Not just included, but I actually opened movie music romance too with that very clip. It's a very first clip, perhaps because it's the perfect form for the title. The title is movie music romance. You watch this two minute clip, and you'll see it's pure movie. It's pure music. It's pure romance is not a word spoken. But Chopin's music is used in the film. And I kind of bring it to life. I bring a more formal version of it, and merge them together. I mean, works pretty good.
You mentioned Chopin is the music. What is it about that movie that you think exemplifies? What film and music do to bring things together that makes something kind of its own unique art form?
Well, it starts with Ron Howard. Many of us those of us in our 60s, Zion grew up with Ron Howard, we saw on his op, on the end, the Griffith show, we saw him and in the Music Man, we saw him in so many places. By 1985, when he made splash, he was coming into his own splash was his first fantasy movie. And then he made cocoon the year after that in 1985, another fantasy movie, but he I think Ron Howard knew as well as anyone that movies are designed and intended to take us away to bring us someplace else to remember back in the 1930s. Even as people barely could find two nickels to rub together, they found a way to go to the movie theaters, because they needed the escape from the misery that surrounded us during the Great Depression. Movies are designed to help us get away for a couple of hours. And Ron Howard really embraced that in 1984. And in 1985, between splash and cocoon,
it seems like the farther we want to get taken away, the more fantastic we go during the Great Depression. I think maybe one of the biggest movies was King Kong. During that period of time. People didn't have much money, but they wanted to see something as unique as that maybe that lends itself a little bit to the movie musical. Because the things that happen in musicals just don't happen to you. You're suspending your disbelief when people just suddenly spontaneously sing and dance to tell their story. And that seems to be that fantasy and not realistic element that you find in film.
It's great if you take us to King Kong, which was made in 1933. And yeah, it was the ultimate escape during the very depths of the Great Depression. Things were really ugly in 3334 3536 25% joblessness, people living in their cars, if they even had a car to live in tough times. But it was actually as long as you brought it up. It was top hat, Fred Astaire Ginger Rogers movie of 1935, famous for Cheek to Cheek that brought me into this whole thing. I remember watching this as a kid and I was a student of history, even as a young guy. And I said, Why would people who had no money in 1935 run off to see Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers with all their, you know, gowns and tuxedos and, and it was purely simply to escape to get away. So, I mean, I've always loved movies, but I've always looked at them for exactly what they are nobody. Well, most people don't want to go away on a Friday night and watch a documentary. They want something that will take them on a journey. Eat, and stuff being made today takes me even further away than that. I mean, it's interplanetary what they're doing. Now, I'm not necessarily a big fan. I like stuff that's more rooted in real life.
When you look at the Fred stairs and the Ginger Rogers and those that started to bring song and dance on to the silver screen. When did we first start to see that? Was that something that there was just strictly an attempt to recreate things that were happening on the stage on the screen? Or was there a moment where it really started to break through?
Now you're really reaching it to film history? Thank you for that question, Steve. Let's start with opera, which goes back about 250 300 years. And in fact, the first movie music romance program begins with labone, right, which dates back to 1896. Puccini. And then like you said the stuff on stage, all the song and dance stuff. But of course, in 1927, out to Al Jolson in the jazz singer with the first talkie. And from that it wasn't long before we were I mean, just a few years later, we were getting deeply into movies and musicals, Busby Berkeley and all that stuff, because people clearly liked it. People were just fascinated with all of that, because it was such a departure from their normal everyday life.
Going back a little bit farther than that. I know that you cover a Chaplin film in your program, which I would assume was a silent film. So obviously, they would send sometimes they would send piano rolls, sometimes they would send specific sheet music, I guess, to accompany silent films, sometimes people just accompany it by themselves. But why include this film? And what does this say about moving music?
Well, simply because they're silent films. Two things. One, I have a fascination with Chaplin. He was born four days before Adolf Hitler and he went on to become the most celebrated, revered Person of the 20th century, certainly the earliest 20th century, everyone around the world fell in love with silent film star Charlie Chaplin. And compare that to Hitler, who was born four days later, the most reviled Person of the 20th century. But beyond that, silent films gave me a rabid video editor and opportunity to plug in my own stuff. So I open both of my shows are near the top is a Chaplin film. And in both cases, I plug in music from a different era. So we have you know, we have Chaplin, the tramp, right. And the music I use in one show is king of the road, because you get by on 50 cents a day, if you could find a gig to pay, it works, people laugh out loud.
Let's talk about some of the different eras to just looking down the list of some of these films that you cover. I didn't really think about it until I looked at some of the dates. But it seems as if there was a classic era of movie musicals that happened in the 50s movies such as South Pacific Seven Brides for Seven Brothers, and the like. Now, a lot of these are things that did start on the stage and then were translated into big Technicolor production. But is there a reason why there were so many of these popular musicals in the 50s,
the golden age of the human male that they're actually the the Golden Age of Hollywood musicals with the late 40s? Well into the 50s. And a big, big part of that was because television was coming on, right television. First political broadcast on television, believe it or not, dates back to 1933. Just read that the other day. But televisions were just beginning to climb into homes in the 1950s. And Hollywood needed to compete. The very fact that the movie houses were under incredible pressure to compete now, with a little box and delivery room to play stuff for free. That's what the movie industry was up against. So they needed blockbuster films, they needed the south Pacific's. They needed the west side stories and so many, so many of the great big, big things Oklahoma, Seven Brides for Seven Brothers, they needed it just to compete. And now for me to be able to go back and just cherry pick some of the great moments of those films and assemble them together, cobble them together into a two hour presentation, I can only tell you that those of us who grew up with that stuff. It's very much like a walk down memory lane. And it's a pretty happy walk because
you think about walking down memory lane for a lot of folks. Nowadays, they might look at a contemporary musical like lala land. And they might view that at home on their big screen TV in full color. And they might not realize that the 1950s audience, those movies might not have translated back then. Because when you're thinking about little 15 inch black and white television, it's not going to be as impressive to see Oklahoma on that because of just the ratio of the screen, the scope, the color, all those things weren't there.
Absolutely true. I mean, absolutely true. But let's talk for just a moment one more time, you know, the dark side is called the Mad Men's out when people get together and they're angry, and they do some things they wouldn't otherwise do. That's the dark side of the mob mentality. There's a positive side to when a group gets together for happy reasons for good reasons. As we do with these programs, I would call it the audience lift. There's an energy in the room, it's palpable, people feed off of each other, they laugh together to laughter louder. And I'll tell you is any school teacher who has had a full classroom that's into what they're seeing, it is absolutely joyful to be at the front of the room, and to be sharing something that everybody in the room has a natural affinity for. And and it's enriched by others who were laughing and enjoying it with them. It's quite a departure from watching a television in the living room. But you hit on one other thing with Lala Land how many people realize even after seeing the film, that it was attributed to old movie musicals, that there were at least a dozen if not 25, different musicals are referenced or cited one way or another in that film, many, many, many things.
What are a couple of them that stick out?
Are the Dancing in the Dark is the same as Fred Astaire centuries from 1953. Right? That's a classic piece. Well, what you always see in the movie posters with Lala Land is the two of them. They're in Griffith Park, just as dusk is settling in and they're going to do that dance. If you remember the film's do. That's a pure takeoff. They're using Lala lands background, just as they use Central Park as the background and dancing in the park. But it's very much the same thing. Several European movies are in their Streetcar Named Desire of all things is in there.
You had referenced the fact that in the 50s, late 40s, early 50s, the movie musical was a bit of a reaction to the developing technology of television, we talked about the jazz singer being the first talkie with with music. Were there other technical innovations that changed the face of the movie musical or musical movies.
Everything started with Busby Berkeley in that regard, right? Not a great student of Busby Berkeley except to say that when he took the camera to the top of the film studio and shut down, shut those Kaleidoscope seems that you might remember if you've seen some of that stuff that was pretty innovative right there. A lot of the stuff they did in the 30s I think was fairly textbook. But look what happened in 1939. And so many great films came out Gone with the wind came out and changed the way everything was viewed. Wizard of Oz came out and use color in a new way, right. And this was in black and white. Suddenly, the world of vases and color. floods. And fill is a film that's featured and I spent a lot of time putting this one together because Pleasantville uses color to reflect enlightenment or growth or learning in much the same way that the Wizard of Oz used color in the film to illustrate the difference between eyes and ordinary Earth. So all of those things play a role in this. And then Orson Welles came along in 1941. And he changed everything with some of the innovations he did.
When we talk about, as we mentioned earlier, not every one of the films that you cover is per se a musical. But there is an element of the music that is notable, for one reason or another. And a couple of things you touch on is the usage of I guess what we think of now as pop music within movies. Now, of course, you know, when Bing Crosby was singing in the movies contemporarily his music was pop music. But when we see it used now in movies like Pulp Fiction, or something like that, it changes the way that music is utilized in a film as well. And I wondered if you could touch a little bit on how music that is brought in. It's not the score necessarily. It's not written for the movie has been notable in some of these films.
Of course, you start with Bing and White Christmas, and he made Halloween in 1942. A song from going my way to a real a real Laura, he and Barry Fitzgerald had a bit of fun with this thing. And what I do is I borrow from the middle of the movie when things things and then I reference it again at the very end of the movie. All the Irish Catholics who grew up when I did will will know exactly what I'm talking about here because it was like you know, there was Jesus there was John Kennedy and there was being a Crosby back in the 60s. That's just the way it was. And I think repackaging his music against you know, a little bit of a different backdrops is where as I'll often keep the song intact, I will re edit a lot of the scenes and bring them together into a bit of a montage. So it changes the way you hear the song and it certainly changes the way you view the movie.
investigating how this music fits might reframe a movie for some people when you were researching for these classes. Did any of that research cast any of these films in a new light for you?
I'll tell you what was entirely stunning and surprising to me the cast everything in a new light. Here I am assembling great moments of Judy Garland or Fred Astaire or Ginger Rogers or whomever write up for modern days. And what I didn't realize is that by stacking one on top of another by presenting 30, or 32, or 34 of these all in one two hour class, these are all classic clips. By stacking them together, it changes all of them, I think, and I'm guessing, but I'm thinking the audience perceives that they're watching a bit of an all star game, that's the best way I could describe it. It's not an ordinary two hours spent watching a film, it's looking at nothing but hits for two hours, one on top of another. And I take just a few seconds in between to put a little perspective on each clip so people can see it. And then of course, I remind them what was going on in the world during the Great Depression, 1930s, World War Two, etc, all the way through all the way through time. So I didn't see that coming. I did not think that there would be this multiplying effect from seeing 30 Some films all put together into one package, but there clearly is.
Well John, thanks so much for talking with us about this class and some of the other things that you've been doing with history and popular culture.
Thanks very much.
John ligera teaches American history and the history of film with presentations held at community colleges throughout Illinois. If you'd like to learn more about history, the arts and more, please check out our other podcasts on Apple podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to this. And subscribe. Thanks for listening
